AUG 4 — During the usual workday, my mom is at home with my 10-month-old nephew, little Tarzan, and they grapple for control of the living room. It’s amusing.
However, at the same time I worry about their safety in a Malaysia where a chasm — between what people need and what those in power want for the same people and themselves — grows.
My friend got hit last week repeatedly with a baseball bat by three assailants outside his condo unit while they tried to push his wife into a waiting car. His persistence to persevere under great physical abuse forced the attackers to flee. They are recuperating today, reconsidering their stay in Malaysia since they are both expatriates.
And if you — the reader — pause, you too will have an inexhaustible list of your own, of victims and crimes. Malaysians across the political divide are in consensus that something needs to be done, but what?
In cycles there are stories of snatch thieves being mauled by a frenzied crowd. People lose control when they outnumber criminals, but being brutal does not end crime.
Actually nothing does, crimes will go on. However, some societies are faced with fewer crimes than others — Malaysia would gladly slide itself to the better end of the spectrum. But how?
Response to crime is dual, to establish the criminal acts, bring perpetrators to justice and rehabilitate them, and the second which is usually the far more important objective, to regain the trust lost to the crime.
The victims lose the most individually, but society as a whole loses more collectively when aggregated. It is not just my British friend and wife who will not be OK to walk down the stretches around their condo for some time, a whole lot of people will be.
The usual turn an analysis like this takes at this juncture would be to look at the underlying causes of crime. However, in this case, there is a need to debunk long-standing fallacies in regards to criminal acts in Malaysia.
Like my prime minister claiming that if there was rampant cheating in previous general elections his coalition would not have lost six states out of 14 states. Nothing criminal occurred, he claims.
First, he is implicitly conceding cheating only is likely to benefit his own side, which means he is conceding these “hypothetical” cheatings are carried out by friendly forces to him.
Second, there are all kinds of problems postulating that if there was no absolute gain by a person, then there was fairness. Meaning if the victor does not get everything his way despite winning, then he had not cheated to win.
That is to say if my pub football team was made to play a team of equal ability with conditions, you then use the scoreline to determine fairness. The conditions being my team is forced to play barefooted, our hands tied to our backs and the goalkeeper blindfolded. Just because the football score was 8-6 does not mean there was no cheating. It just means we played our asses off despite the conditions, and inevitably lost.
Or when the police and road transport authorities set up roadblocks to penalise motorists but do little about the smoke-belching, overage and unreliable heavy transport vehicles driven my many irresponsible and unfit drivers.
Again I am not asking for more drivers to be sent to prison, but why is it those who manage transport vehicles in a way they expect their trailers to break down are not investigated when a family dies when their car rams into the parked vehicle at highway exits?
They cannot selectively prosecute people and then preach to the people that generally motorists should show better care on the roads. They are right in asking motorists to be careful, it is great advice to be careful, but when they are seen to be partial to some and not to others, the advice becomes coloured.
It might seem far-fetched that isolated and low-impact crimes have origins from the prime minister’s politics and enforcement agencies being tactically selective.
But it is not. It underlines a national think, our attitude. Crime thrives in a place of low trust.
We do not trust the police will come and gather evidence at the crime scene. Nor will they talk to residents to have a better description of the perpetrators. Nor expect them to sit down and come up with a plan to nab the wrongdoers.
No one who lives in the city would believe the police will respond adequately to the crime. If the crime was serious and of news interest then there will be presence. But the presence during the news-cycle does not guarantee an outcome after the cameras leave.
The feeling in the country is that you have to be somebody for your safety to matter or your opinion to count.
There is no collective well-being in education, healthcare or safety. The accelerating drop in law and order is more primal and headline grabbing. But the malaise is universal.
The rich can afford gated communities and worry when they have to leave their compounds. Alarmingly even the middle class has to cough up for security guards these days. It is one thing for the millionaire to install security features because they possess enough for burglars to connive to rob them. It is abject when regular Malaysian homes have to pay small operators so that they can keep their basic things safe from the most resource-starved criminals. Are they in real terms paying “protection money” to the security firms?
Drawing back to the earlier position that only the “haves” matter, would that not mean everyone including politicians, civil servants and businessmen look at Malaysia as a place to take what you can, when you can?
Would that national attitude lead to more gaps where crimes will not only fester but thrive in. That the success stories are made of those who think less of others, but more of themselves.
And since what is wrong or right is determined by “select” people and not by principle and reason, the general population slips in priority to those “select” people?
We are at an alarming point in our history to create a just and reasonable society. Crime shows societal shortcomings in the crudest and scariest way.
Our society must reclaim a greater share of trust, with our political leaders leading the way. The ingredients of trust are honesty, communication and ownership.
Which means leaders must be more concerned about speaking about things in the right way rather than being bent — come what may — that they are right.
They have to concede mistakes have occurred, priorities misplaced and justice overlooked.
People have to be re-convinced that no crime is too small and all persons are equal under the law, if anything the weak come first in consideration.
Our long-term solution to our abysmal crime situation is to reshape our society so justice — codifying, adjudicating and implementing it — does not distinguish the “haves” and “have-nots”.
When being fair and right is paramount, then the crime ratio falls. Confidence to get away with any criminal action will drop, which will lead to less crimes. Because we will all know by heart that no one is above the law.
That has to be a holding principle as we set forward to keep all our lives safe.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
